What environmental factors played a role in the divergence of the histories of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas from those of Eurasia and North Africa during the first millennium C.E.?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: While the densely populated central belt of Eurasia, stretching from China to Europe and North Africa—the region that had seen so many experiments in civilization for so long got bigger, as it incorporated new frontiers, in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific, similar but smaller zones began to take shape but remained fragile due to environment and geography. Geography is often said to imprison sub-Saharan peoples. While great axes of communication cross-fertilize much of the Old World, the Sahara and the Indian Ocean separate most of Africa from those highways of cultural exchange. Some of the flows of culture that we can detect, such as the spread of farming and of Bantu languages, took centuries longer than comparable transmissions in Eurasia. The shape of the American hemisphere slowed diffusion of culture and crops, which had to travel across climate zones through the narrow, central continental funnel, creating an isolation that had to be overcome.